Shorter poems
Finding peace
Finding Peace when our connections, the ties that bond us to one another are severed.
Remember
By Christina Rossetti
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land:
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
A Mother's Lament For Her Son's Death
By Robert Burns
Fate gave the word, the arrow sped,
And pierc’d my darling’s heart;
And with him all the joys are fled
Life can to me impart.
By cruel hands the sapling drops,
In dust dishonour’d laid;
So fell the pride of all my hopes,
My age’s future shade.
The mother-linnet in the brake
Bewails her ravish’d young;
So I, for my lost darling’s sake,
Lament the live-day long.
Death, oft I’ve feared thy fatal blow.
Now, fond, I bare my breast;
O, do thou kindly lay me low
With him I love, at rest!
“Hope” is the thing with Feathers
By Emily Dickenson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
Beyond the Veil
By Timothy Thomas Fortune
Across our path a sunbeam gently lies;
We know not whence it came; we think we know;
But, as we watch its glories come and go,
It fades away! Whither? Into the skies?
We seek to follow it, with blinking eyes,
Beyond the Veil—of which we nothing know!
But e’en imagination is too slow
To chase a sunbeam as it heavenward flies.
The fairest and the dearest objects fade,
Just as a sunbeam comes and glides away;
But, e’en while lingering in the gloom and shade,
Struggling through sorrow’s night into the day,
We feel “’tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved”—whatever the cost.
There is No Night Without a Dawning
By Helen Steiner Rice
No winter without a spring
And beyond the dark horizon
Our hearts will once more sing ….
For those who leave us for a while
Have only gone away
Out of a restless, care worn world
Into a brighter day
Everywhere I look you are, but you’re nowhere
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
Everywhere I look you are, but you’re nowhere.
The room is full of you….
You are not here. I know that you are gone,
and will not ever enter here again.
And yet it seems to me, if I should speak,
Your silent step must wake across the hall;
if I should turn my head,that your sweet eyes
Would kiss me from the door. – So short a time
To teach my life its transposition to
This difficult and unaccustomed key!
There is your book, just as you laid it down,
And here are the last words your fingers wrote…
in this brown book I gave you…
you did not know you would not write again….
In God is My Strength
By Helen Steiner Rice
“Love divine, all loves excelling,”
Make my humble heart Your dwelling…
For without your love divine,
total darkness would be mine.
My earthly load I could not bear.
if You were not there to share
All pain, despair, and sorrow
that almost make me dead tomorrow.
For I am often weak and weary,
and life is dark, and black, and dreary.
But some how when I realize
that He who made me the sea and skies
And holds the whole world in His hand
has my small soul in His command,
It gives me strength to try once more
to somehow reach the heavenly door
Where I will live forevermore
with friends and loved ones I adore.
A Perfect Day
By Carrie Jacobs Bond
When you come to the end of a perfect day,
And you sit alone with your thought,
While the chimes ring out with a carol gay
For the joy that the day has brought,
Do you think what the end of a perfect day
Can mean to a tired heart,
When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,
And the dear friends have to part?
Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
Near the end of a journey, too;
But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
With a wish that is kind and true.
For memory has painted this perfect day
With colors that never fade,
And we find at the end of a perfect day
The soul of a friend we’ve mad.